Jordan's King Abdullah met Tuesday with the chief of staff of the Israeli army, General Moshe Yaalon, who paid a rare visit to the Kingdom, according to a Royal Court statement. The statement did not give the purpose of the visit, the second by a ranking Israeli commander in a week. The commander of the Israeli police, Moshe Karadi, visited the Hashemite Kingdom last week for talks with the director of the Jordanian Public Security Department (PSD), Major-General Mohammad Eittan. Local press reports then quoted a PSD spokesman as saying the two men discussed measures to ease border travel and combat smuggling operations. The two governments have been in constant touch over the past couple of weeks to ensure protection for Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine, against threats by an ultranationalist Israeli organization to enter the holy place by force. --SP 2303 Local Time 2003 GMT
